1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to dining out, and more particularly to providing a pleasant dining out experience for persons having food sensitivities or preferences.
2. Description of the Related Art
Everybody enjoys going out to a restaurant to enjoy a meal. However, many people suffer from food sensitivities (food intolerances or food allergies), and both the patrons and restaurant personnel seek to minimize issues with such sensitivities. A typical person having food sensitivities may have a great interest in restaurant offerings and may ask how certain dishes are prepared, and wait staff may or may not know depending on the particular dish and/or sensitivity. Restaurant personnel certainly seek to serve patrons food they desire, but servers may simply not know of the contents of all ingredients of a particular dish. In an absolute worst case scenario, a patron with multiple sensitivities may be faced with just two, one, or even no choices from a full restaurant menu. A patron may peruse an extensive menu for several minutes, ask the wait staff certain questions, wait for the wait staff to investigate certain food sensitivity issues, and finally conclude that nothing on the menu she can eat appeals to her.
Certain patrons may request preparation alterations—no gluten, no peanut oil, no trans fats, no butter, no shellfish, etc. In the views of a chef preparing the dish, such alterations may compromise the quality of the dish and may not provide the requisite dining experience commensurate with the standards of the establishment. Further, making a different dish on the fly, omitting certain components, may place a significant additional burden on the food preparation staff.
Certain patrons may additionally have certain preferences, including a desire not to eat meat, a desire to avoid salt, a desire to eat kosher products, and so forth. Such persons may be looking for a restaurant that does not, for example, serve meat, and may consider a restaurant that advertises vegetarian meals but changes menus on a daily basis, and on the day he wishes to visit, the restaurant offers only one vegetarian dish that he dislikes.
Additionally, once the wait staff understands the specific preferences of the patron, these preferences must be captured by the wait staff and given to the kitchen staff accurately in order to minimize dishes that need to be redone.
Thus in the face of patrons having food sensitivity issues or certain preferences, certain time and restaurant revenues may be lost based on the way such sensitivity and preference issues are currently addressed.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a system that addresses previous issues related to restaurant patrons having food sensitivities or preferences. Such a system would preferably decrease costs incurred by restaurant personnel addressing individual food sensitivities or preferences and time required to provide such patrons with satisfactory meals, and increase revenues by providing more choices to more patrons with food sensitivities or preferences.